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There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them (yahoo.com) 185

Posted by EditorDavid from the you're-not-the-boss-of-me dept.
"Friction between bosses and their employees over the terms of their return shows no signs of abating," reports the Los Angeles Times. But there's one big loophole... About 80% of organizations have put in place return-to-office policies, but in a sign that many managers are reluctant to clamp down on the flexibility employees have become accustomed to, only 17% of those organizations actively enforce their policies, according to recent research by real estate brokerage CBRE. "Some organizations out there have 'mandated' something, but if most of your organization is not following that mandate, then there is not too much you can do to enforce it," said Julie Whelan, head of research into workplace trends for CBRE...

The tension "is due to the fact that we have changed since we all went to our separate corners and then came back" from pandemic-imposed office exile, said Elizabeth Brink, a workplace expert at architecture firm Gensler. "It's fair to say that we have different needs now." A disconnect persists between employer expectations for office attendance and employee behavior, CBRE found. Sixty percent of leaders surveyed said they want their employees in the office three or more days a week, while only 51% reported that employees work in the office at that frequency. Conversely, 37% of employees show up one or two days a week, yet only 17% of employers are satisfied with that attendance.
In the article, one worker complains about their employer's two-days-a-week of mandated in-office time. "I feel like I'm back in grade school and being forced to sit down and do my homework."

The article also notes some employers are also considering changes in the other direction: "calculating whether to shed office space to cut down on rent, typically the largest cost of operating a business after payroll."
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There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them More

There's a Big Problem with Return-to-Office Mandates: Enforcing Them

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  • Conflict of Interest (Score:5, Interesting)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @06:55PM (#64898463)
    CEOs and Board members who are personally heavily invested in commercial property are going to take a bath if/when companies start shedding office space due to employees working from home consistently.

    This is a direct conflict of interest, as the corporations they run would certainly be more profitable without renting all of that office space, and with happier, more productive employees working from home.

    Shareholders need to keep an eye on this, and should be punishing CEOs creating return to office mandates as they are reducing corporate profitability in order to keep their (the CEO's) personal commercial property investments afloat.

    • CEOs and Board members who are personally heavily invested in commercial property are going to take a bath if/when companies start shedding office space due to employees working from home consistently. This is a direct conflict of interest, as the corporations they run would certainly be more profitable without renting all of that office space, and with happier, more productive employees working from home. Shareholders need to keep an eye on this, and should be punishing CEOs creating return to office mandates as they are reducing corporate profitability in order to keep their (the CEO's) personal commercial property investments afloat.

      WTAF? Why would a software billionaire care about real estate? I get that most of /. likes to work from home...but this is an unfounded and incredibly stupid conspiracy theory. Big Tech wants you back in the office because THEY think it makes you a better employee...not because they want more rent money from these non-existent investments. You know most companies lease their office space....it's in their financial interest to reduce their office footprint....but you know what's more expensive than rent?

      • Someone has to own office buildings and industrial parks and I doubt they’re poor.

        • "Someone has to own office buildings and industrial parks and I doubt theyâ(TM)re poor."

          Very true, but irrelevant. The rich guys owning the buildings for the most part *not* the tech companies. The tech companies lease their offices; for them it's pure expense, not an asset. The people owning the buildings get no say in whether the tech companies mandate working in the office or not.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by dgatwood ( 11270 )

            "Someone has to own office buildings and industrial parks and I doubt theyâ(TM)re poor."

            Very true, but irrelevant. The rich guys owning the buildings for the most part *not* the tech companies. The tech companies lease their offices; for them it's pure expense, not an asset. The people owning the buildings get no say in whether the tech companies mandate working in the office or not.

            Actually, A. the first part is not true, and B. even if it were, it still wouldn't mean that the tech company execs aren't impacted by real estate prices.

            Lots of big tech companies have bought large numbers of buildings over the last decade, and currently lease them out to smaller companies through property management firms. The idea is that eventually, they'll need the space, and when they do, they won't renew their tenants' leases, and after the last one moves out, they'll bulldoze several tiny buildings

            • Wait, are you,saying those big companies are requiring their employees to RTO because then the smaller companies they lease to will uh... what? That makes no sense.

              You think these big companies would rather RTO and then their REITs will be worth more because they're paying their own management company to house their own employees and making money by uh... what?

              None of this makes any sense.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by dgatwood ( 11270 )

                Wait, are you,saying those big companies are requiring their employees to RTO because then the smaller companies they lease to will uh... what? That makes no sense.

                I'm saying the big companies are requiring RTO because allowing WFH means needing fewer offices, which means A. they end up with more office space to lease out, which means greater supply for the same demand, and thus potentially less income from leasing them out, and B. if other companies follow their example, WFH means those companies will need less office space, further driving down income.

                You think these big companies would rather RTO and then their REITs will be worth more because they're paying their own management company to house their own employees and making money by uh... what?

                Except in rare circumstances, they don't pay their own management companies (but this does happen sometimes). But n

                • > I'm saying the big companies are requiring RTO because allowing WFH means needing fewer offices, which means A. they end up with more office space to lease out, which means greater supply for the same demand, and thus potentially less income from leasing them out, and B. if other companies follow their example, WFH means those companies will need less office space, further driving down income.

                  You think they'll make more money renting out a smaller number of sqft for $X than renting out all of their own

              • Dude imagine you built the biggest building downtown for your HQ, you totally ripped off the city and the county making deals to get you there. The building has storefronts and restaurants, the surrounding area is full of business that makes all its money on the lunch shift.

                You play golf with those guys, you're fucking their wives, you made promises, you did blow and hookers together to seal the deal.
                Yeah man I'll get people back downtown for you buddy.
                I don't get why you're pretending its not the case wh

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by shilly ( 142940 )

              Um, most commercial real estate is not owned by Big Tech, not even close. It's in private hands: a mix of PE and completely private money. Blackstone is the world's largest landlord, with about 2 trillion of real estate assets on its books. It tends to hold properties for about 3 to 5 years before flipping them. But property is incredibly fragmented because it's so capital-intensive, and BX only owns a small fraction of the world's property. The UK's largest REIT, Landsec, is a FTSE 100 yet owns a negligibl

          • Actually the last big tech company I worked at DID own their buildings and additionally leased excess space to other organizations. For a while the X Foundation was even one of the orgs that leased from the tech company IIRC.

            • One of my companies did exactly that. How does my company requiring their employees RTO make any difference to their leases to other companies?

              Wouldn't my company want to have everyone work at home so they can fully cash in on renting to other companies?

              RTO looks like a bottom line loser no matter how you look at it, the best bottom line impact is to not have any real estate owned or leased and have everyone WFH. Leasing out space on the side to someone else would be a nice side gig but adds additional r

              • I'm no real estate magnate but it seems to me that if enough office staff WFH that reduced demand would cause supply to outstrip the remaining demand.

          • Tech CEOs have zero loyalty to their companies. They're loyal to their other buddies.
            I read an article about some rich guy "starting from nothing" just to prove how easy it was.
            Pretty much first thing he did was shake down his buddies for speaking engagements and he was bam, instantly back in the upper middle class.

            IIRC he still wasn't able to make his million and he got bored but basically you're asking if they'd do the right thing at work or enhance powerful connections that can get them money, judicial

        • Banks own office buildings, borrowers pay them mortgage payments. When the properties go under-water (worth less than the outstanding loan balance) payments will stop, banks will foreclose, and then banks start failing... then guess what? Politicians will bail out the banks to save citizens (voters) bank accounts... and who will pay for the bailout, the tax payers... great plan.

      • Where does TFA talk about Amazon or software billionaires? It's a discussion about corporations in general.

        With the exception of some very few tech billionaires who were vested initial stock in unicorn companies they started up, most millionaires and billionaires have most of their money in two things - general stocks and real estate. That's a fact. Their current salaries pale into significance compared to their assets.

        It's estimated that work from home could wipe about $US800 Billion from office valu
        • The people with a public financial interest in real estate went to the office long ago. The RTO news is much more around big tech companies because everyone knows they don't absolutely need you in the office and they can be flexible if they wanted to. If you're selling commercial real estate, nor doing most real estate related jobs, you can't do that over Zoom, Slack, or WebEx. If you're writing code for Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, etc....most of those jobs can be done from anywhere. The Venn Diagram of

          • They have publicly stated they think it's better for productivity. There are logical reasons to believe them. If you think they're lying...

            What are the logical reasons to believe them? Every study I've seen shows that WFH increases productivity. I don't believe executives when they say WFH decreases productivity because I haven't subjectively seen it in either my or my wife's workplace, and every objective study I've seen says the same. These executives ARE lying.

            https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... [forbes.com]

          • PoV: You have been Isekai'd to a world where the ruling class membership is in fierce competition with itself instead of gleefully engaged in active collusion against normal people, who they loathe and believe must be kept busy lets their idle hands cause problems.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        Why would a software billionaire care about real estate?

        Because no one, not Elon Musk, nor Donald Trump, nor Bill Gates, or any other rich guy worth a ton of money is like Scrooge McDuck and sitting with a huge vault of cash so they can swim in it.

        All those billions of dollars are in investments in order to make more money. Real estate is an investment, and commercial real estate is generally a good one to be in because there are fewer regulations involving its purchase, sale, and use than residential real

      • It is not a conspiracy theory. It is a fact that remote work is far more beneficent for the employees.
        Think about a typical family where the two parents work and have two cars so they can go about their business. If even one of them is working from home - most likely they won't need a second car. Remote work saves on fuel, tires, general maintenance of the cars. Saves you expensive lunch at cafeteria/ restaurants near the office, saves you on clothing that you have to buy just to be presentable at work. A

      • Why would a software billionaire care about real estate?

        Because they are invested in real estate as well as software.

        Big Tech wants you back in the office because THEY think it makes you a better employee

        Big Tech is not one thing and it does not have a brain, it does not think anything.

        Amazon is a 2 trillion dollar company. They told everyone to RTO because the leadership thought it would make their employees more productive.

        I don't think they did. I think the leadershit thought it would make themselves look more productive when they are walking around bossing people, having meetings which don't need to be had when an email would suffice, etc.

    • Of course, in the short-to-mid term it gets a bit more complicated since businesses typically sign fairly long leases for office space - they can't just walk away from those payments, regardless of whether there are people making use of it.

      Not to mention that the largest businesses (e.g. Amazon) often have built and own the space themselves.

      And then there are mayors and city councils who are driven by 1) a legitimate desire to protect the ancillary businesses that were created to support all those in-city w

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        And then there are mayors and city councils who are driven by 1) a legitimate desire to protect the ancillary businesses that were created to support all those in-city workers; and 2) probably aghast at the impending loss of their own power and prestige which will follow if these companies don't drive their employees back into the skyscrapers.

        Turns out return to office mandates don't really work out for such businesses. Sure, the workers are back, but they're also PO'd and not really in a spending money kin

        • Kind of a funny thing - there are meeting rooms available, and people who are in the same meeting are in the office, but they're still at their desks on Zoom rather than using said meeting rooms. I've heard meetings in stereo and surround sound as participants in it sit all around me answering questions.

          I've seen this as well! I've specifically tried to schedule meetings for when I and others are on campus - I've even adjusted my schedule so I could be on campus as the same time as the people I want to meet with. But everyone still just wants to do Zoom meetings - even if we're all within a few hundred feet of each other! And this includes the higher-ups... at least at my job.

          I find it rather hilarious because "meetings" is one of the few non-hand-waving arguments people give as a reason for wanting people

    • Re:Conflict of Interest (Score:4, Insightful)

      by kyoko21 ( 198413 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @08:43PM (#64898671)

      The company I at closed an office in Tampa, FL during the pandemic back in 2022. We just closed another one in downtown DC, a few blocks away from the Capitol. We're about to close another one in Baltimore. Every single one of these office had no one coming in and since we introduced a lot of new workflows to accommodate WFH it made more financial sense to continue on and let our commercial leases end and not renew saving the company a decent amount of money.

      What is going to happen in 2025.... no one knows. All we can do is plan for the worst and hope for the best.

    • It could also be that these gray hair shareholders believe in collaboration errrr I mean micro management where you can count attendance, tardiness, youtube usage, and cell phone time when they can be supervisered in person. So if you lay off 1/3 of employees they can ensure the last 2/3 will be 30% more productive now.

      I am not saying that this is true. But it is the believe from the banking WallStreet guys who actually own the company especially if they are over 50. They will never say this out loud but co

    • CEOs and Board members who are personally heavily invested in commercial property are going to take a bath if/when companies start shedding office space due to employees working from home consistently.

      Who are these tech CEOs and board members that are renting out office property?

      This claim gets repeated all the time but there's never any evidence of this supposed conflict of interest. The only case was with that WeWork dipshit and well that's no longer an issue.

      They can just be dumb and/or control freaks.

    • Start turning office space into housing. What do the little people really need? A cot in a cubicle sounds like a riotous good time for peons. Think of the parties they can have in the evenings? Camp fires in the hallways! Weenie roasts every night! It'll be like a campout inside a building!

  • ... someone puts into enforcing a policy tells you how much they think they can get away with forcing a group of people into compliance. It sends a message about how serious they are and how much they're willing to lose to enforce a policy.

  • The change has already happened (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Squiff ( 1658137 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @06:59PM (#64898479)
    Working in an office has been a brief aberration for a short part of recent human history. Agrarian societies obviously largely worked from home. Pre industrial tradesmen and artisans worked from home. With the industrial revolution people got pulled into factories and offices. We're now at the point where a significant number of jobs don't have any intrinsic requirement for workers to be in any specific location. It's been covered over and over but there isn't any data to drive return to the office, it's all 'management feels'. Countered with the enormous and documented benefits for individuals and the environment from allowing WFH. Whenever you see an RTO mandate, it's always from the C-Suite, never the staff. It's like Canute trying to hold back the sea. The change has already happened and the genie is out of the bottle. Just done people haven't read the memo yet

    • Re:The change has already happened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @07:03PM (#64898493)

      >Working in an office has been a brief aberration for a short part of recent human history

      It's similar with performance arts - it's been interactive with a live performance in front of a live audience since the first fireside story, then suddenly we're all sitting like zombies in front of a bright screen that doesn't alter based on audience feedback.

      I think we're going to see that change soon with AI-generated live variations on stories adjusting for our reactions in real time.

      It is difficult to realize how odd our existence is compared to our history as a species since we generally only experience 8 decades of it and even then we really only pay attention to the 'now' unless we're reminiscing.

      • ... since we generally only experience 8 decades of it ...

        Not enough time to learn to play bridge, properly (to paraphrase our species greatest sage, Terry Pratchett).

    • Re:The change has already happened (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Sique ( 173459 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @07:26PM (#64898545) Homepage
      Working in an office was a necessity when your signal carrier was an actual carrier, who took your messages and walked/ran/rode to the intended receiver. And that means offices came into being as soon as there were messages to transmit, because shorter distances between sender and receiver means lower round trip times. Offices thus started as soon as we had societies. The only difference today is that so many jobs are office jobs, while people working on the farm and in their own shop are a minority. If I remember the history of the Industrial Revolution correctly, it was in the 1920ies and 1930ies, when white collar workers for the first time outnumbered blue collar workers and farmers.

      It's not too long ago when the time to walk with a stack of paper into the neighboring office was still faster than sending it per e-mail or fax or sharing it it a common network folder. And at the time, it actually made sense to have people working physically close together. Maybe 10 years ago, we for the first time had enough tooling available to have remote collaboration a viable alternative for most office jobs. And the pandemic caused most of us to actually learn those tools and design work flow around them. And that's the main reason why today, people working from home are actually on a comparative productivity level than people in the office.

      RTO is one of the many "back to the old times" nostalgias. While I think they will be around for the foreseeable future, I also think they will become more and more of an item on a wish list than an actual, enforced mandate. And that has nothing to do with the office being unnatural, and all with cheaper ways to reach the same productivity level. Working from Home is another BYOD. Let's call it BYOO - bring your own office.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by RobinH ( 124750 )
      You all think you're brilliant for daring your boss to fire you. Do you think millennials were stupid? They just happened to graduate when there was a glut of people in the labor market, and they had to work side gigs just to get by. But the boomers have mostly retired (you should thank them). It's possible that the birth rate will stay low and politicians will cave to pressure and keep immigration low in which case maybe the labor market will stay tight, but if it doesn't there's going to be a huge wake

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Xarius ( 691264 )

        Why does no one ever discuss an upper age limit on voting? This would solve so many problems of the next generations being fucked over by old people. Something reasonable like state retirement age +3 years or average life expectancy -5 years?

        We don't let people who are too young to vote because they're selfish, short-sighted and don't really have the mental faculties to understand it properly. This description applies to a lot of old people too.

        • Re:The change has already happened (Score:5, Insightful)

          by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @05:28AM (#64899297)

          We don't let people who are too young to vote because they're selfish, short-sighted and don't really have the mental faculties to understand it properly. This description applies to a lot of old people too.

          If you want to disenfranchise a group based on finding some idiots among them I would say abolish voting altogether. Most old people are not senile and are perfectly fine. You point to the average life expectancy, shit the overwhelming majority of old people are perfectly lucid at that age, it's usually only a small subset with medical conditions who are not.

          The reason we treat young people differently is because the entire group collectively doesn't have the ability to understand the wider world around them, and it would be an exception rather than the rule for someone to be able to make an educated decision about the future of a country at their age.

      • Could you elaborate on why a declining population necessarily makes the labor market tight? I'm not arguing with you. I'm just not convinced. With a declining population, there are less people to work. But there's also less demand for many goods and services. The one reason I can think is that the percentage of the population who is working age will be lower. But older people also tend to purchase much differently. They don't tend to have new houses built. Those who are still in good health tend to d

    • Ignoring the fact outright that the shift from nomadic to agrarian culture was also stupidly recent as regards to evolutionary time periods, in neither agricultural nor nomadic societies did the workers sit at the tent/home and instead went somewhere else to work, generally soon after the sun rose. The men especially wouldn't return to the tent/home until their work for the day was done.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Working in an office has been a brief aberration for a short part of recent human history.

      That is actually an excellent point!

  • they're not enforced if they want to keep you.

    • Re:It's just stealth layoffs (Score:5, Interesting)

      by hwstar ( 35834 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @07:21PM (#64898531)

      Ah, selective enforcement. This can expose a company to legal risk and get then in a whole heap of trouble in certain states (such as California).

      Of course, the employment-at-will card could be played: "We can fire anyone for any reason or no reason so long as it isn't an illegal reason". The burden of proof is on the fired employee to prove otherwise.

      • Perhaps. But most of these RTO mandates are fairly large companies. Larger employers tend to have very well defined procedures for firing somebody. Their boss will lay out the reasons that they aren't performing and come up with a performance improvement plan. If you get put on a plan, you should start looking for a job. Yes, some people do meet the terms of plans and improve their performance. Usually the reason people end up on plans are usually symptoms of a larger problem.

        I remember talking to a

    • They can fire you without cause anyway. To say you must come into the office or we can fire you doesn't really increase the threat level

  • Genie is out of the bottle (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrLogic17 ( 233498 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @07:24PM (#64898541) Journal

    We have several years of hard evidence that many jobs can be done entirely remotely. There is no good economic or productivity reason to mandate return to office. (manager egos and corporate optics of office buildings are another thing)

    Workers now know what it's like, and many strongly prefer it. There are 3, maybe 4 companies in my commute distance that could be potential employers for my job title. When I work remote, I have access to 10's of thousands of companies across the entire united states.

    Employers, if they have any sense at all, will realize the same is true for them. What are the odds that the nation's best talent lives within 60 miles of their office? Why pay SanFan wages when equal talent lives all over the USA, eager to work remotely? Why pay for office space- when people sit alone in cubes doing Teams calls?

    Cities should press for remote workers. It keeps tax dollars where people live. It reduces traffic. It frees up commercial space for other uses- almost like inventing more land in the heart of cities.

    I've spend thousands of hours commuting. Wasted. Spent away from my family. For nothing.
    I've been paid low local wages, because employers knew I had nowhere else to could go.

    I will never work in office again. At any price.

  • Enforcement is easy for full 5 day RTO, if you want to go nuclear. Just disable remote access privileges for those that don’t show up without a reason, after a suitable period of time. Reinstate once they agree at actually show up. Fire them if they don’t. Require higher level management to sign off on reinstatement.

    It’s just that very few want to go that far.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Sure. If you deeply desire to blow up your organization and end it, just do that.

    • Just disable remote access privileges period. Then the workers have to be there during normal work hours, and they go home and are unreachable the rest of the time. No more unpaid overtime.

      What, Management just excreted a hot steamy one?

      It will now take an hour or more to call someone and get them back in the office so they can fix your emergency? Well wah. You could always hire one of the night owls to work night shift. They would be there alone and unsupervised and that is not acceptable? Isn't that the s

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by erice ( 13380 )

      Enforcement is easy for full 5 day RTO, if you want to go nuclear. Just disable remote access privileges for those that don’t show up without a reason, after a suitable period of time. Reinstate once they agree at actually show up. Fire them if they don’t. Require higher level management to sign off on reinstatement.

      It’s just that very few want to go that far.

      Breaking VPN breaks access to employees outside of normal working hours. I don't the micromanagers pushing for RTO are willing to give that up.

  • I've never worked anyplace where most people can manage themselves. Those that can are usually called managers and they always have strategic vision past the people they manage. And micromanagement is usually due to the next line manager not having the strategic vision to plan for the unforeseen and it being privileged need to know. So many at home worker seem to want it all ways, the entire picture but with none of the responsibility.

    • Remote work doesn't require self-management. As a remote manager myself of a largely remote team, I find that it's a bit different managing remote workers, but it's very possible to effectively manage people whether they are remote or in office. I use exactly the same techniques for all.

      People who aren't self-managing can easily waste time at work, just as they might at home.

      • No one wastes time at the office. Hey did you see that funny cat video Janet sent around?

      • Indeed. Good managers are good managers because they choose to learn management. Most first-level manages are promoted from individual contributors to first-level management. But they don't have any actual skill or ability in management. I've seen many people make that transition. Some imagine themselves to be coaches (I got promoted because I was so good at the job, I'll teach the people below me how to do it better.) The usually suck. Others decide to take the opportunity to improve themselves and

  • Who would have thought?

    RTO is as pointless as asking back office phone operators to wear suit and tie to work, or you must comb your hair a certain way, or you must shave in the morning. It might be the norm 30 years ago, but by now it is so obviously pointless that people would circumvent it continuously to reduce effort, unless the company waste even more resources to patrol the office to catch and punish offenders, which would do wonders to staff morale.

    Sane managers define measurable productivity metri

    • You can't develop measurable KPIs for software development. This makes some managers nervous about letting developers work remotely. But the lack of measurable KPIs does not mean it's impossible to effectively manage remote developers.

      Companies keep spouting these notions of "chance encounters" that can't happen without on-prem work. But chance encounters are *not* the most effective way to produce results. 90% of the time, new ideas come from structured planning processes, not random encounters. If a compa

  • Companies have a problem to solve (Score:5, Interesting)

    by nehumanuscrede ( 624750 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @08:30PM (#64898651)

    It seems many of the employees they're threatening are calling their bluff.

    Company:
    Back to the office. Now.

    Employee:
    Or what ? You going to fire us all ? You've laid off so many there isn't anyone left to do the work.
    We're it until you hire a new group of folks and train them up to do the job. Good luck hiring anyone
    without a remote work policy in this day and age.

    Company:
    Well. . . . . . shit.

  • Enforce this backward stupidity and lose key personnel and all high-performers. Managers that actually manage individuals are painfully aware of that.

  • The labor market is tight (Score:3)

    by Sarusa ( 104047 ) on Sunday October 27, 2024 @10:17PM (#64898823)

    The big problem with this (other than the stupidity of it being driven by worse than useless managers and executives trying to pretend they are doing something useful) is that the labor market is very tight. We have very low unemployment. And it's especially tight in the tech industry because actual skill is required for the important jobs - as someone who has recently been interviewing a lot of people for one job, you can't just fire half your staff because they won't come back to the office then find competent people to fill those jobs. Yes, you will get thousands of resumes for each job, but 2/3 of those will be recruiters doing pray and spray, and good luck finding anyone who actually knows what they put on their CV.

    I am currently working several jobs (yes, they all know about each other) where they would love to have a full time employee, and I am actually trying to help two of them find a full time employee to replace me, and it's hard. And I am legitimately trying to make this happen, I would like to lose at least one of these jobs and have more free time!

    So anyhow, it's going to take a truly consequence blind executive to actually pull the trigger on firing everyone who refuses to come into the office five (or more) days a week who has any job skills, because you can't just instantly replace them with J. Random Schmuck. But there are lots of those execs, so I'm sure it will happen.

  • "I feel like I'm back in grade school and being forced to sit down and do my homework."

    Well, if being told by your company/boss to come into the office to work is the main thing that you object to, then that means that you have a highly desirable work environment. That means that you won't want to quit just due to return to office policies. Most workers have far more objectionable things, like bad bosses, unreasonable workloads, bad coworkers, bad work-life balance (beyond just return to office), bad pay,

    • Well, if being told by your company/boss to come into the office to work is the main thing that you object to, then that means that you have a highly desirable work environment. That means that you won't want to quit just due to return to office policies. Most workers have far more objectionable things, like bad bosses,

      I can't relate with this perspective. Being told to come to the office *is* having a bad boss. And it is quite likely that this bad boss does other bad boss things like micro-managing or other silly power moves.

  • ...I'm not ok having to live in a crime ridden city that hates cops, punishes anyone that fights back against criminals, makes guns illegal, and has literal human shit on the sidewalk from the oceans of homeless junkies that wash up on its shores.

    I'm not ok with the schools in said city calling my kids racist oppressors in school because of their skin color.

  • I am not anti remote work, but I am pro not tolerating disrespect from leadership and other workers. If you can not get in line with the organization then resign and go work elsewhere. It is not up to you to tell how to run someone elses company.

    If you can't find a remote job then oh well your resume and skillsets are not as high as you think they are. Go up them then. In the meantime there are over 1,000,000 laid off American IT workers since 2022 who will be happy to come in the office and want to work if

    • Weird that you're choosing that path when you could go the other way, the one where we don't find it normal to terminate someone who was late a few minutes three times. We're all humans, nobody wins when we all pressure each other more.

      • Showing up late for a service job is pretty serious. Imagine you went to McDonalds to get some coffee but they didn't have any food to serve because everybody on the 9am shift was 5 minutes late? You wouldn't go back. Starting an IT job a few minutes late usually doesn't have such serious consequences to the employer. But, no, you can't "go the other way" and just decide that it's okay for service workers to show up whenever they want. Because the business wouldn't last very long.

  • My employer (Software company on the upper-end of medium-sized) gave everybody the choice to go back to the office or not. When almost nobody actually did, they started closing offices when the leases ended to save money. They basically let the employees decide what happened.

  • My wife's corporation 'mandated' a return to work. Her boss/supervisor basically told her, "Eh, whatever." and let her keep on working from home. If the boss doesn't care, why do the higher-ups who don't actually deal with the employees care?
  • For the best price, most office space is leased multiple years at a time. If they've already paid for it, they feel they need to have people there to occupy it.

    Then comes vanity. Company leaders are proud of their office. Either the office itself is beautiful, or the image of workerbees keyboarding away, gives leadership a power trip and a symbol of vanity when showing off the office to visitors (guests, potential investors, etc).

    I can understand (but don't agree with) the former bit, if only until

  • I'm one of those uncooperative managers (Score:3)

    by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 ) on Monday October 28, 2024 @08:51AM (#64899603) Homepage

    My company has remote employees and on-prem offices. For those who live in an area where an office is located, employees are required to come in to the office five days a week. For those who live far from any offices, and whose offer letters specified that they are remote employees, they don't have to come in to the office, ever.

    This division naturally causes some envy and frustration, from those who are required to go in. My team has some of both. For those who are required to come in to the office, I tell them plainly, "I don't monitor where you work. If you choose not to come in, I don't care, I'm not checking. If you're doing your job, I'm good with wherever you choose to do it."

    This attitude seems pretty common at my company, though not universal. Guess what...people working under those other managers, keep trying to come over to my team! And for those who are good at what they do, I work with them to make the transfer. Win-win!

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